After filing for bankruptcy, Jessica Firger breaks up with her tarnished credit score—and makes a financial recovery

Declaring bankruptcy was remarkably like losing my virginity: It was over almost before I knew it, and it was surprisingly anticlimactic. Afterward—just like my former teenage self—I felt a few pangs of regret, then a steady sense of relief. I ate some pizza, took a shower, cleaned my desk, phoned a friend.

Though bankruptcy is ostensibly a dirty business, there's no better place to wipe your financial slate clean than downtown Brooklyn's bankruptcy court; with its sparkling marble lobby comes the subliminal promise of fiscal purity. Two security guards were waiting when I pushed through the courthouse's heavy doors one August afternoon in 2011. I threw my backpack on the conveyor belt to be scanned for heavy weaponry and ­surrendered my possibly terrorist cell phone. My summons called me to attend a 2:35 P.M. hearing in Room 254; it was 2:32. For my first real brush with the legal system, I'd hoped to ­behold a grand courtroom and a robed judge to whom I'd have the ­opportunity to plead financial insanity.

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What I found instead was a stuffy, windowless room with scores of metal folding chairs and a balding clerk seated ­behind a battered table, surrounded by towers of paperwork that I later recognized to be stacks of 50-page petitions, one for each ­debtor. A metal clipboard hung from a nail at the entrance to the ­fluorescent-lit room, "SCHEDULE for 8/2" scrawled in blue Magic Marker at the top. I scanned for my name and suddenly felt a whole lot less special. I was just one of four people slotted for a 2:35 hearing; at least three cases were crammed into every five-minute interval. I briefly admired the apparent efficiency of our court system as I took a seat near an elderly woman wearing a winter hat despite the summer's sweltering heat and behind a man who appeared to suffer from restless legs syndrome.

In its harried awkwardness, a bankruptcy hearing resembles speed dating; the whole thing takes about as long as brushing your teeth—and I'm not talking about the full two minutes recommended. The clerk called my name. I stood up, my dress sticking to my sweaty back, and approached him. He dropped my hefty petition on the table with a thud.

"Raise your right hand," he said, and I took an oath.

"Have you filed bankruptcy before?"

"No," I said. My heart was racing.

He rustled through the pages, stopping at a chosen few for more information. "No house…no car…" he mumbled. "You know you'll still have your student loans?"

"Yes, I know," I said. Believe me, I knew. All $45,000 of them.

The clerk asked me what I did for a living. "I'm a journalist," I said. "A freelance ­writer." He peered at me over his reading glasses and furrowed his brow. I think I heard him sigh as he sifted through the papers, and I braced myself for what he might say next: You should have gone to law school. Meet a nice man and get married while there's still time. Perhaps you should consider teaching. Move to a cheaper city. Keep a budget. Start saving for retirement. Young lady, how exactly do you plan to keep yourself out of the hole?

But he simply signed my petition and asked me to do the same.

I first considered filing Chapter 7 a few years ago, after losing my job as a reporter for a small travel-information start-up. I then began suffering what turned into an eight-month bout of mysterious neurological symptoms that led to endless tests and visits to specialists but yielded little solace and a complicated diagnosis—about all of which my Blue Cross COBRA was less than fond or fully financially forthcoming.

As for many of the 1.4 million Americans who filed in 2011, my debt grew out of a long string of unremarkable expenditures—living around $2,000 per year beyond my means for a decade. Take a series of jobs paying an average salary of $33,000, add two spells of unemployment, a brief stint in grad school, a prolonged health problem, student-loan payments, and a credit card with a 12-to-14.9 APR. Then stir. I can't blame shoes or vacations for the $30,000 hole I found myself in. I can blame the new mattress I desperately needed when I moved into my first apartment at 23. I also blame the $15 lunches bought at the closest upscale deli in midtown Manhattan when my boss wouldn't tolerate my absence for more than 10 minutes. Oh, sure—there were a few fancy frocks, a new laptop, some nice dinners out, an $18 lipstick. Anyway, it's all money under the bridge now.

Living off plastic is the American way; we shamelessly spend money we don't have. Our national credit-card debt currently tops $800 billion, and 46 percent of all Americans carry balances from month to month—at an average of around $16,000 in credit-card debt per household. And Gen-Xers are among the most culpable of consumers; our identity has been shaped by the immense debt we've racked up in an effort to maintain the standard of living we enjoyed with our baby-boomer parents.

Yet bankruptcy is often still viewed as a personal declaration of moral weakness—even in the midst of our Great Recession. In many cases, perhaps even most, however, bankruptcy is precipitated by significant misfortune: According to the 2010 Finan­cial Literacy consumer bankruptcy demographics study, two and a half times as many Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2010 as in 2006, and 40 percent of them reported that a job loss or income decline had influenced the decision. Many were also driven to it by inadequate health insurance; a 2007 study by the American Journal of Medicine found that 62 percent of debtors listed medical bills as a main reason for filing, and that medically bankrupt ­families have $18,000 in out-of-pocket expenses due on average—a number that approaches $27,000 for those with no insurance.

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Before losing my job at the end of 2009, I'd made great strides toward catching up, often writing checks that totaled more than $1,000 to four or five different creditors at a time. Some days, it seemed like I might actually be able to get my head above water. But when I was laid off, I began subsisting on unemployment benefits of $354 per week and whatever freelance work I could find. My enigmatic health symptoms surfaced. Overdue-­payment notices began to roll in from the credit-card companies. My finances spiraled into a complete shambles for about a year.

I talked to Bank of America more regularly than I did to some of my friends, and the customer representatives were often nice. "We understand it's a difficult time, and we'd like to work with you," they said. I haggled, pushing back payments a few weeks or ponying up a few good-faith dollars—until I no longer could.

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As the months flew by, the sympathetic calls from banks morphed into nasty communications from collection agencies. I stopped answering my phone. One sunny morning early in 2011, my doorbell rang. I figured it was a Jehovah's Witness or the meter-reader, but when I opened the door, a small young ­woman handed me an envelope and said she was serving me court ­papers from my good friends at Bank of America.

There comes a time when you have to look beyond the exis­tential crisis that's been throbbing in your head like an ever-­worsening toothache and do something about it. For me, this was that moment. I dove into the "All You Need to Know About Bankruptcy" packet I'd gotten from a local nonprofit and ­began the process—which turned out to be remark­ably easy. I collected six months of bank statements and pay stubs, two years of tax returns, and a pile of overdue credit-card and medical bills and, over an $8 bottle of wine, filled out the 30-plus-page form.

It's pretty simple: I was eligible to file because my income was below the average for residents of my state. I have no money and own nothing of value—no stocks, bonds, cars, boats, trailers. I did not own so much as a pet (you're required to estimate how much you could theoretically sell yours for). My short list of ­"major property items" included a wheezy four-year-old Mac laptop worth around $400, my nine-year-old bed, some other shabby furniture, and an old CRT TV worth maybe $50. I was relieved to learn that my eight-drawer Ikea Hemnes dresser wouldn't be confiscated anytime soon.

I could keep all my junk, but I'd still owe the Tax Man a few grand (I'd had insufficient salary withheld at my erstwhile job). And I owed much more to the U.S. Department of Education; while I would be able to continue deferring my student loans for the time being because of my lack of employment, I will at some point resume racking up interest charges at the going rate. By the end of my evening of reckoning, I almost regretted the ­loans that I'd taken out in order to spend my junior year of college in England drinking bitter and snogging grad ­students. Almost.

I had one chore left to attend to: When you file for bankruptcy, you're required to take two online credit-counseling courses on how to manage your money. It's time-consuming and boring to answer more than 100 questions about balancing a checkbook, opening and building a savings account, budgeting a meager income, and knowing the difference between wants and needs. It's unclear how beneficial this counseling really is; to me, it seemed both obvious and a little too late, and largely irrelevant to the circumstances that had brought me here.

It's been almost a year since my bankruptcy case was closed. My credit may be ruined, but I still haven't vanished in a puff of smoke. I've already received some flirty come-ons from Master­card and Visa—not an outpouring of love, mind you, but low-commitment, low-credit-limit offers at loan-shark ­interest rates, especially given the deflated carcass of an economy we're now facing. I tear up such correspondence feeling like a scorned lover, and I've instead taken the advice of prudent financial gurus and acquired a secured card: The creditor holds a small sum of cash from me—really, it's better that way.

Though the credit bureaus will continue to talk smack about me for up to 10 years to anyone who inquires, I can live with that; I'm in no position to even think about undertaking anything that might be sabotaged by my credit history. I don't need a vehicle, and may (I hope) be able to own my own home only later in life. A sketchy New York City landlord will be more inclined to rent me a shoebox if I move because I'm no longer shouldering insurmountable debts. If I do get into financial trouble again, I'll have to wait eight years to repeat the process. I hope that won't be necessary.

The fact that I'm still standing—housed, clothed, and fed—surprises many of my friends, and some barely conceal their disgust at my finan­cial condition, the big scarlet B on my chest, ­behind a look of grave pity, as if I've confided news of a recently acquired STD. But others dropped their guard once they'd recovered from their initial surprise or horror and turned to interrogating me about the process—quite obviously fingering the aching tooth of their own financial worries.

When I revealed my plans early on to a close friend who ritualistically balances her checkbook each weekend while watching CBS Sunday Morning, she said tersely, "Bankruptcy should be like divorce—do it just once."

Those are optimistic words in a world where you're about as likely to get divorced as you are to stay married. In fact, it turns out that the ­dismal experiences of bankruptcy and divorce are frighteningly similar in at least one way: Once you do end a crappy marriage or break up with your lousy credit score, it appears that you may be somewhat more ­likely to do the same thing again down the road.

Humans seem designed to repeat the same mistakes over and over—one big ­reason why our financial system doesn't work for a lot of people. As the daughter of divorced ­parents and a family that has always struggled ­financially, I've often wondered whether the odds were stacked against me. When I told my parents of my intention to file for bankruptcy, they were underwhelmed and even, it seemed, a little relieved: underwhelmed because they'd both filed for bankruptcy before, and relieved ­because some collection agencies had found ways to call them about my debts.

My mother, who filed for bankruptcy a few years after I finished college, supported my sister and me mostly on her own in New York City—no mean feat. As a child, I watched her flail at financial self-preservation; she'd pay down her pile of monthly credit-card bills—barely skimming the principal ­balances—early on a Sunday morning, hovering over the ­kitchen counter with her coffee, which occasionally would leave a ring on a credit-card statement. She tried her best to be wise about her finances, which were always precarious. But she also firmly embraces the base joy of material rewards. I learned early in life that sometimes things can make you ­happy: just one small thing that smells nice or tastes good, that makes you feel a little prettier or smarter, if only for a brief moment. And you should ­reward yourself for hard work, for being a good and honest person, for taking care of yourself and others. The hardest part is admitting to yourself that sometimes you just can't afford to.